On my mind lately

[firecat]

Internet linguistics. "It was a link to something awesome and it was captioned: 'I have lost all ability to can.'” I love this stuff. And only partly because LOLcat grammar is now likely to pop out of my mouth at inappropriate moments.
http://the-toast.net/2013/11/20/yes-you-can-even/
Are attacks on Internet language related to attacks on selfies? If the claims in this quote are true, then I bet so:

However, what I find most fascinating about the Internet Language is that it is making language less, not more, gendered. Men and women on the Internet use many of the same tropes, enthusiasm markers and emphasizers in order to communicate. In the world of blogging and Internet writing, women are the creators of language. It is a realm in which women are not being socialized with already existing language but are doing the work of socializing and creating a community. Women dominate every important social media platform. Women outnumber men on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest and account for 72% of all social media users. On Tumblr, where the number of men and women is roughly equal, women dominate the conversation.

And then there's this blog post excoriating social media for "destroying the English language" by methods such as ""4. The Fragmentation of the Sacred Sentence Structure"...under a subtitle of "Undefined. No Boundaries. Caffeinated."

Comments

[stardreamer]

That's a really good point. Most slang is ephemeral and quickly becomes dated, but occasionally a term will successfully enter the language on a long-term basis. I used "cool" recently as an example of one such term. "Okay" is another one, although most people now don't realize it because its origins predate us.

There's a demonstrated phenomenon that people tend to continue to use at least some of the slang that was current during their teen years well into their adult lives. This is also going to contribute to the continuing usage of "cool".